Feds Throw School Kids Under the Cheesewagon

In Rochester, New York, a lot of kids take public transit to school; the transit authority even organized its routes and service times to accommodate them, which seems logical enough. But it is not logical to the Federal Transit Administration; according to the Campaign for America's Future:

The FTA's regional administrator, Brigid Hynes-Cherin, said the authority's actions violated regulations governing federal mass transit funding because even though the routes could be used by general public, they weren't primarily for the general public. Plus, she added—and here is where we get to the real nub of the issue—public bus systems can't use federal money to provide services that compete with, or crowd out, private sector bus companies.

However the owner of the biggest private cheesewagon company says that the rule doesn't go far enough "to protect private school bus operators from federally subsidized public transit operators."